Network card upgrade

[Cutie | NEED HELP]

I have a old Acer aspire m desktop 

It has a old wifi card that’s problem I have been using a usb wifi dongle but that’s seen better days could anyone help me in recommending a good PCIE Ethernet card I want to run a long cable from my modern to pc 

[191x7]

Pretty much any will do.

[Cutie | NEED HELP]

Thanks will a wifi 6 one work ? 
It’s a old 2015 prebuilt but I can remove the network card 

 

[Blue4130]

6 hours ago, Cutie | NEED HELP said:

Thanks will a wifi 6 one work ? 
It’s a old 2015 prebuilt but I can remove the network card 

 

For wired ethernet? No. Wifi 6 is for wireless. Look for a generic gigabit nic with an rj45 connector. 

 

https://www.amazon.com/TP-Link-1000Mbps-Gigabit-Ethernet-supported/dp/B003CFATNI

 

Something like this. 

[wseaton]

Yep. That will work.

 

If you were asking for a wifi replacement I would still suggest a USB dongle. 

[Alex Atkin UK]

On 4/8/2022 at 8:08 PM, wseaton said:

Yep. That will work.

 

If you were asking for a wifi replacement I would still suggest a USB dongle. 

Strongly disagree, USB is vastly inferior to actual PCIe cards.  Weaker signal, more prone to overheating, etc.

[Cutie | NEED HELP]

Ok thanks for the reply’s I was looking for a wifi 6 wireless card or a rj45 gigabyte card one of the two recommendations which would be better

[Alex Atkin UK]

5 hours ago, Cutie | NEED HELP said:

Ok thanks for the reply’s I was looking for a wifi 6 wireless card or a rj45 gigabyte card one of the two recommendations which would be better

Wired Intel are generally best, though pretty much any Gigabit card will do the job if you don't mind losing a bit of CPU efficiency.

 

WiFi I'd recommend Intel again, AX200 or AX210.

[Cutie | NEED HELP]

Ok thanks appreciate it 

[Cutie | NEED HELP]

They aren’t pice ones any recommendations for that 

[Alex Atkin UK]

9 hours ago, Cutie | NEED HELP said:

They aren’t pice ones any recommendations for that 

There's a few, the brand doesn't really matter as 99% of the hardware is the physical Intel card/chip itself.

https://www.amazon.com/Expands-Bluetooth5-2-5400Mbps-Tri-Bands-MU-MIMO/dp/B08NJ4HTL3/

[Cutie | NEED HELP]

So that will work with my  old pc motherboard all I need is it to have pice and it should work ?

[Alex Atkin UK]

8 minutes ago, Cutie | NEED HELP said:

So that will work with my  old pc motherboard all I need is it to have pice and it should work ?

As long as you have a PCIe slot that it fits in, yes.

[Cutie | NEED HELP]

Ok sweet 

[Cutie | NEED HELP]

Is there any better quality ones or that’ll do nicely 

[Alex Atkin UK]

4 hours ago, Cutie | NEED HELP said:

Is there any better quality ones or that’ll do nicely 

They're 99.9% the Intel chip itself, the supporting hardware is just resistors, capacitors, etc, which is less likely to be a problem.  I believe the heatsinks are just for show even, as its the identical chip used in laptops without any fancy cooling.  My PC just uses an adapter to use the laptop card directly, which is all a lot of these branded ones do.

 

The only thing that can make a difference IMO are the antennas.  If the back of your PC is not facing where the router is, having them on the back can be problematic so models where the antennas are on the end of a cable can be valuable.  But you can also buy those antennas after-market, so you have to compare the higher models bundled with them to the price of just getting one later if you need it.

[Cutie | NEED HELP]

Ok thanks yea just wondering if you had any better quality ones like antenna and range wise 

[Alex Atkin UK]

I'd be guessing if I did as I only really use WiFi over short range and use the antennas I already have that came with previous motherboards, plus one that came from a much older WiFi adapter.

 

They all work fine for my needs, but over range I haven't a clue.

 

I do notice there are a lot of ASUS 2T2R antennas on eBay from people who aren't using Wifi on their motherboard so sell the antenna.

The other antenna I use is like this one https://www.amazon.com/Eightwood-Antenna-Connector-Magnetic-Wireless/dp/B07JVDNDCR/ which I continue to use as the magnetic base stops it falling over which the ASUS one easily does as its not even a weighted base.

 

There's also this https://www.amazon.com/Fenvi-Wireless-AC-2030Mbps-802-11ac-Miracast/dp/B07DMDZ888/ but as you can see, they actually charge a premium to get the antenna with it.  Note, the URL implies its an older model, they seem to have replaced it with the AX210NGW based model though if you read the page.

[Cutie | NEED HELP]

Thanks I’ll have a look

[Alex Atkin UK]

4 hours ago, Cutie | NEED HELP said:

Thanks I’ll have a look

There is one potential benefit to the latter, if that antenna is specifically designed for WiFi 6e it should work better in 6Ghz than all the others that were designed for 2.4Ghz and 5Ghz.  But I have no idea if that is the case nor if you will be using 6Ghz any time soon.

[Cutie | NEED HELP]

Yea that’s something I’m looking for some sort of future proofing even tho in the tech community every new standard gets released so often 

[Cutie | NEED HELP]

This is my old network card looking for something with that 4 pin plug connector